Second Maryland hospital loses patient data

Just a week after high-profile Maryland hospital Johns Hopkins lost data on thousands of patients and employees, a second Maryland hospital has reported losing data on about 130,000 former and current patients. St. Mary's Hospital just notified the patients that a laptop stocked with their personal information was stolen from a hospital late last year, in December. The laptop, which was based on the hospital's emergency care center, included names, Social Security numbers and birth dates for patients going back to 1989, though no medical or financial information. However, the data was not scrambled for privacy protection, so whomever has the laptop could conceivably read it. To protect patients, the hospital has contracted with a firm that specializes in identity theft cases--National ID Recovery--which will help patients keep track of potential credit issues that might emerge at no cost.

To get more information on the data theft:
- read this article in The Baltimore Sun

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